Dancing The Night Away

"Guys, last night was the best night of this entire trip!" Ailyn exclaimed this morning. It was surprising for a girl who spent the first hour of dinner laying her head on my lap trying to fall asleep and saying "I want to go home. Can we go home, right now?"

Despite her long afternoon nap, beginning dinner at 9:30 didn't agree with her. The restaurant was very full and noisy. Patrons – a surprising amount of them Greek, presumably from Athens and elsewhere in Greece – were smoking like it was a Pan Am flight circa 1965. We were there at the invitation of Victor, our host/landlord and joined by his visiting Georgian/Russian girlfriend and our Finnish "neighbor" in the next unit, Mina. Dinner was a set menu to be shared family-style and it didn't seem to particularly appeal to Ailyn, who had a considerable pre-func "snack" anyway. The live band on stage playing traditional Greek folk music didn't seem to capture any of our attention and perhaps because we don't speak Greek, the songs seemed to drone on, indistinguishable from one another at a volume that made conversation extremely difficult.

This dinner was headed nowhere and Ailyn was the canary in the coal mine.

Until the servers all disappeared and then came on stage in traditional Greek costumes to perform folk dances. Our girl sprung to life, went around the table and sat on Emily's lap to get a better view. Sennen too – who being the musically motivated person he is had some initial interest the folksongs which quickly trailed off and became bored – also hoping to leave. Again, until the folk dancing began – and then, he was glued to the stage.

To me, the dancing wasn't new or exciting – Emily and I had watched a fantastic Greek folk dancing show nine years ago at the Patmos Music Festival which was much better than Aloni Restaurant – and I'm not really fan of folk dancing to begin with. But it was completely new and interesting to the kids and when you consider that it's a Patmosian family that runs a restaurant and after serving the main course of "mixed grill" meat platters hustles on stage for a rather skilled dance performance every night and a lot of afternoons too – it's an impressive feat. 

After about seven dance numbers, the troop sought volunteers from the audience to join them for dancing. Not surprisingly a number of smoking Greek women wearing leopard print dresses were the first to join, but the others did as well and after a few moments of hesitation, Ailyn decided that she too would dance. So, at 11:00 on a Saturday night, Ailyn was dancing – what to a Jew was essentially the Hora – in Hora. Ailyn, accompanied by Emily circled the stage, the room, and back on stage as the growing group of participants broke up into smaller circles. Being both the only child dancing – and being who she is – people pointed, smiled and encouraged Ailyn the entire time.

Sennen, being who he is, was not as eager to perform – but did find the dancing to be the best part of the evening and watched intently. "This part is MUCH better, Daddy! I didn't want to stay, but I like this!"

However, around 11:45 when the dancing died down, the dance troop turned back into servers and they brought the traditional end-of-meal watermelon to the table, Sennen and Ailyn alike wanted to go "now". The servers were so focused on clearing dishes, getting watermelon distributed to the large crowd and organizing the guest checks that it was hard to get our check quickly. With some persistence I did and we left ahead of the rest of our party, who we could barely hear most of the evening.

By the time we got to our car, drove down the hill to Skala, returned to our house and got everyone to bed, it was 12:45 – the latest the kids have stayed up this trip. But they seemed to feel it was worthwhile.

At dinner, Mina, a very nice nurse from Helsinki sat next to Emily who was able to have more conversation with her than anyone else. Mina told us that she had done the hike to Psili Ammos – the one beach on the island inaccessible by car – earlier that day. She said it had strong wind and waves, unlike most beaches and that while it was very pretty, she wasn't sure children our kids' ages would enjoy it. We had strongly considered taking an excursion boat today to Psili Ammos, in part because everyone says how beautiful it is and also because excursions jumping off a boat to swim go over well with our family. However, Mina triggered some further research which when combined with the likelihood of tired children in the morning caused us to reconsider. Instead, we told the kids to sleep as long as they like and we could just go to our favorite beach, Petra where the water is swimming pool still.

It turned out to be a fortuitous decision as Sennen woke up not better, but a little worse. In the morning he had a mild fever and was most certainly out of sorts – feeling tired, complaining about his stomach, not wanting to eat and trying intermittently about how lousy he felt. in the late morning, Sennen went back to sleep – which seemed to help. As a result, Sennen and Emily stayed home while Ailyn and I went to lunch and to Petra where we had a fantastic father-daughter beach day together and she met a couple of older girls from Chicago who included her in their play. As is often the case with one-on-one time with Ailyn, she was playful, fun and just as sweet as she could be. Meanwhile Matheus decided to hike to and from Hora and explore the city on the hill.

By the end of the day, Sennen's mood and energy had improved and he is feeling well enough to go to dinner as planned at the restaurant we call "Cheese From Our Farm" due to its eponymous menu item –  but is properly called Ktima Petra. My favorite restaurant on the island, Cheese From Our Farm operates a small organic farm next to the restaurant from which it derives most of its produce and dairy in Patmos' stab at Farm to Table. Only instead of serving classically yuppie, American dishes like kale Cesar, roasted Brussels sprouts, Kurobuta pork chops and Jidori brick chicken – Cheese From Our Farm serves classic Greek and local Patmosian fare, just using very flavorful, fresh, hyper-local ingredients. While more than three-fourths of restaurants on Patmos have traditional Greek eggplant salad, once you've had it from Cheese From Our Farm, it's the only one worth eating. And I can say that about a dozen other produce and cheese-based items including their almost vividly colored salads. 

With Sennen beating his mom at Uno while waiting to go out for dinner and Ailyn wearing her golden Greek goddess/laurels headband, it seems like Sunday is winding up on a quiet and happy note. Some nice healthy food and an earlier night will wind things up right. But for Ailyn, dancing the night away will always be a stand-out memory.